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· 10 min read
Technofied

This might seem like a weird post to make, but I'm writing it based on some of the survey feedback I've gotten so far, both from you, the playerbase, and internally from the Staff team. It's important to me that people are recognised for the work they do, and it's equally important people have an understanding as to how, this is why the Staff Guides are publicly available on our wiki, you are able to directly see how we do things and be a part of our procedures.

With that in mind, I need to apply this logic to myself as well. Unfortunately I feel there are a few misconceptions going around with how I run things and divide my work. Some include:

  • You work on new features as a primary objective, bug fixing as a secondary objective.
  • You only do what you feel like doing.

Both of these are false, but it's not too hard to see why people feel that way. So let's delve a little deeper into how I do things! :)

Balance - it's important!

Before we get into it, there's one statement that I hope everyone and their dog on this server understands and embraces. I tire it out to death because it's true.

  • Life comes first, everything else is secondary. Seriously.

If I have work deadlines, commitments with friends, etc it doesn't really matter what state the server is in. Chances are, the server can live without me (and you). You might think you're dedicating more time to something you enjoy (and that could be right!), but often that isn't the full story. When we decide something as simple as "oh I'll skip going out with my friends/sleep/etc to <fix this issue/finish this building/write a few more lines in #politics>" we are saying that our wellbeing can be put on hold. This is never the case (as much as I've tried haha).

While it is true that playing on this server makes a part of all our lives, it's always a balancing act at the end of the day. Everyone who plays on this server has a rich and fulfilling life of their own, I'm not saying ditch DC everytime something comes up, but you really shouldn't be sacrificing your wellbeing in other aspects just to try and "satisfy" this part of your life because you think you can. It's OK to decide to spend more time on DC when you've had a packed week, maybe you have already been going out and decide to trade one more night out playing DC - that's IS an example of balacing things healthily.

What is not an example of balancing things is where there is obviously a net negative (loosing sleep for nothing), or at the expense of something you could actually benefit from.

It's in my interests as a server owner to promote this message, because honestly a lot of players I've seen over the years lose sight of what matters and end up leaving the server on a bitter note. Some end up also leaving abruptly/sooner than we would expect too, and almost all these ex-players end up in resentment in one form or another. This is usually because they realise this too late, and haven't left having developed these habits earlier. Balancing your other activities with DC is a skill that is transferrable anywhere, if there's one thing I want you to take out of this blog post, I want it to be this above all.

Ok, now that's out of the way - my priorities!

How do I prioritise things

We all know my time is limited and I need to make trade offs on what I do and don't do. I haven't mastereed this yet, but by the day I like to think I'm getting close. I work based on these priorities:

  1. The Server itself
  2. The Government

It's not very complicated, basically I work on the server first - be that bug fixes, staffing, coaching new trial moderators, resolving tickets, it is a full basket and needs my attention first as a server owner. After that, I have commited myself to being a Secretary and other jobs/activities within the Government. You'll notice I haven't slotted enjoying the server last, or anywhere for that fact. When I feel tired or overwhelmed while I'm working on DC I ask myself whether I want to be doing something on DC for fun or elsewhere, and then I just immediately act on that. That's why you'll often see me abruptly leave a voice channel or say 'brb', taking a brain break when you need it shouldn't be a scheduled activity - it needs to work for you (it certainly isn't a chore!).

When I wake up the first thing I do DC-wise is just read over what I've been pinged/DMd about. You lot have been doing a better job of putting things in tickets and pinging me in them, or other desiganted channels as appropriate. It's appreciated, because I will forget otherwise (sorry :P), please continue to do this!! After this, some time during the day if I decide to work on DC I tackle server stuff in roughly this order.

note

Notice how I said DC-wise, implying its just the first things I do when I get around to DC, that's because my job isn't DC - it isn't anyones. Make sure you're taking care of yourself first when you wake up, not a Minecraft server!

  1. Tickets
    • What can I complete right now?
    • What needs to be written down to do later?
    • Has previous tickets I've engaged with been closed out? If not, figure out why.
  2. Follow Ups
    • I tend to DM and message a lot of developers or other server owners for things, be it to fix things for me or to get a second opinion on things.
    • I generally start by checking the ticket channels I can remember I made, and then my last recent DMs for anything I've missed.
  3. Visit the Bug Tracker
    • This is a new form of organisation I implemented to better track what needs to be completed visually.
    • It is public info - check it out here. :)
    • I start by seeing if there's stuff I already have fixed, and then marking those.
    • I then attach myself to issues I can fix, and start working on those.
    • Once I've finished/done what I can, I'll see what I can attach to other Staff members (if anything can be)
  4. Features and Fun Stuff
    • What have I thought about implementing first/for the longest, can I get that done now?
    • What else can we add?

Where the problem begins...!

There's a very important concept that I previously mentioned that I think most players gloss over, which is "done what I can". I will take the example of the very nasty persistent lag we've had over the past few weeks, and instability/downtime with Treasury and Business.

The problem with those plugins were very bad structural ones, I spent a lot of time chasing Ollie (our lead developer) and Andrew (also a developer!), to pass debugging information and spend time figuring out what is going wrong, but a lot of the time with plugin-related issues (like this one) that's all I can do. I grab relevant information, debug what I can, then pass it on and wait. That cycle repeats itself until we have a solution. I exhaust that cycle before I move on for the day because I rarely allow things to go incomplete.

It's no fun at the end of several hours of debugging to just end there, that's why as a reward I work on new features, and I think this is where players being to perceive incorrectly what I do.

A lot of the debugging work I do behind the scenes is just done silently because I usually have nothing much to say/share. There's a lot of issues I can't fix in one day, and with the case of Businesses and Treasury that was a several week-long effort. What I can do each day to mitigate the issue gets done, but after that I recognise I should be able to have some fun.

Unfortunately after doing silent debugging all day, and then jumping on to do features, it looks like all that time I invested was actually adding features/new things, which sucks because, no, it wasn't. :(

Moving forward

I'll probably post in server announcements (or #support?) temporarily what's been done on pressing issues like lag, things being offline etc. That way you can see that the work I do silently isn't so silent.

I also encourage you to check our bug tracker, I do a lot of my thinking there on bugs.

I'm going to be honest, 80% of my time as is, is spent on bug fixes/improving existing systems. This includes Staff and player relations in that 80% figure, and then the remaining 20% is the fun feature stuff. Don't get me wrong though, I do enjoy problem solving, which is largely in part why I do so much bug fixing.

Did you know?

The summer furniture expansion pack only took me ~30 minutes to implement!

I generally don't struggle to add features once I have an idea on how they work.

I've been working on Minecraft servers for a long time, it's almost always easier for me to add new features, this means when I when I get to doing them, I do them quite quick. That's why you see new things from me more often, I only need a little time to do a lot with features.

This is largely due to the nature of adding a new feature, when you fix a bug you're often tracing back and editing existing systems, with new features it's easier as you often only need to add, not tweak, pull apart and inspect!

The bugs I tackle however are usually more niche/have more moving parts. A lot of our simple problems have complicated issues, and they take a lot of time, that's the nature of IT you will find actually. :P

Concluding Thoughts

It's easy to see why players feel I don't give enough attention to the "big issues" or other bugs that face them, I empathise with how that may look. Hopefully with this blog post you can see that it isn't a case of my priorities being in the wrong order, rather that there's a mismatch in perception of what I do versus what I actually do.

A lot of the time I'm faced with bugs and issues that need a lot of time to solve. Between then, I like to keep myself engaged by adding new things!

Anyhow, hope you liked this form of long style yap, writing. I get told often that I write a lot, it's a therapeutic exercise for me haha!

- Yours Faithfully, Tech :)

· 3 min read
Nacholebraa

Welcome back and welcome in to this weeks release of the rolling Changelog. We are excited that you have stopped in and taken a look at what we have been working on!

Features

  • Buisness In-Game Shoutouts
    • The Department of Commerce is now able to manage Buisness Shoutouts in-game without having to require staff involvement!
    • Color codes are not supported in these advertisements.
    • Syntax: /register-business-shoutout <slot> <ad>
  • Campaign In-Game Shoutouts
    • The Department of Commerce is now able to manage Campaign Shoutouts in-game without having to require staff involvement!
    • Color codes are not supported in these advertisements.
    • Syntax: /register-business-shoutout <slot> <ad>
note

Did you know that staff work to remove our interaction with government action regularly. If you have something you fee we can automate open a ticket in #support

  • Hat Recipes Implmented!
    • The previously released hates from the previous Changelog now has reciepes in /ia
  • Profession Update
    • All professions skills have been reset to 0 as updating to a new plugin.
    • Previous plugin dropped support of skills hence the reason for change.
    • You now get paid every 15-minutes for skill payments!

Government

  • Budget Management
    • The President is now able to fine/unfine directly from the government account.

Staff

  • BlueMap
    • Has been rolled back online. Changes made to make it less abusable when utilizing it.
  • Bedrock Support Updated to the latest version!
  • Chestshops Update
    • Updated the plugin to remove ghost holograms from removed shops!
    • All shops now appear in /find
  • DemocracyTreasury Updated
    • Updated to have proper taxation messages. It was indicated that players were not being taxed double. However, it would that player were due to the wrong display.
  • Shulker Shells Update
    • Disabled the ability to open shells in the air due to reasonable exploits.
    • Enabled the ability after migrating to a new properly written plugin.
  • DemocracryDiseases
    • ALL diseases were reset due to a glitch of old disease non-exsistent disease data being uploaded.
  • DemocracyCraft Midlife Crisis
    • DemocracryCraft didnt win in it's midlife crisis... Too long of a story to explain...
  • Derpy_Bird Retirement
    • Following 954 days on the Staff Team, long time player Derpy_Bird handed in her ID and retired to nest to enjoy an evening making bird noises.

Summary

Overall the server had a productive week in pushing new updates that included patching Postman Pat a long time feature all the way down to wishing the best to a long time staff member of the server. Overall the week was a success and we look forward to seeing you throughout this week.

· 3 min read
Nacholebraa

Welcome to this week's changelog! We're thrilled to share the latest updates and improvements, all aimed at making your experience smoother and more enjoyable. Check out the new features and enhancements we've rolled out for you!

Features

  • Wedding Rings
    • A series of new weddings rings have been released and are available to the jewller profession.
  • Toggle Stream Mode
    • When streaming let others know by doing /togglestream on/off
  • Website Changes
    • Upload attachments that are 4096KB (4MB)
    • Upload unlimited attachments to your messages
    • Schematics with .schem extension are now able to be uploaded
  • Furniture Update
    • Addition of the summer time madness into the furniture and decore domains. Over 84+ different items added!
  • Hats Update
    • Take a look at the colorful and decorative hats added into the game! Over 100+ new hats added!
note

When we had massive amounts of items through new features. This is often to the surprise to the Department of Education. It's advised to allow the department to catch up before harassing them seeking where the new items are!

  • Flower Update
    • Makeing the house smell like daisys has became easier with the addition of 100+ new flowers!
    • Obtainable through drops as well as potential crafting recipes!
  • Build World Plots
    • Updated to go down to y=-64 to allow for deep builds free of hassal in breaking it up into parts!

Government

  • Department of Health
    • A clinic has been added to the prision.
  • Diseases have been re-enabled
    • Following a patching being pushed improperly we reverted the changed to restore the plugin.
  • Executive /about menue Updated
    • To include Special Advisors

Staff

  • DOS Vote Registration Reminder
    • Has been updated to be the proper command /dos-requestregistration
  • New /fly menu for Staff, Department of Public Affairs and the Department of the Interior.
    • This is to provide simplicity within all fields who utilize flying.
    • Syntax: /fly <reason>
  • Staff Ticket Formating
    • Has been updated to allow for tickets to look presentable to the greater public.
  • Bug Tracker Updated
    • To indicate what items are pending a restart to ensure there is a deck of pending items awaiting to be changed.

Summary

This week's updates bring a host of exciting new features and improvements! Enjoy the new wedding rings, toggle stream mode, enhanced website functionality, and a plethora of new furniture, hats, and flowers. Government updates include a new clinic at the prison and re-enabled diseases, while staff updates improve voting registration, flying commands, and ticket formatting. Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to check back next week for more exciting changes and updates!

· 2 min read
Nacholebraa

Welcome to this week's changelog! We had a quiet week regarding rolling out changes and implementing new items. However, we are still working on things in the background!!!!

Features

  • Nothing has been added this week!

Government

  • The government tutorial hologram for 'Cabinet' was changed to green.
  • Reveille Prison
    • The Department of Health added a clinic!
  • Voter registration public announcement
    • Added into a rolling announcement chain in chat.
  • Department of Construction and Transportation
    • Added reason code 'Rental Limitations' to eviction report form

Staff

  • Fuel is disabled for the custom textured vehicles from MTVehicles.
    • Is a potential temporary change
  • Furniture per chunk doubled to 20
note

We should take a slow and cautious approach to changing this limit. We don't want to lag players out. If you notice your client side needs to catch up, reduce the number of these items in your area.

  • Rollout of new feature logging system.
    • Designed to assist with backend management of ongoing project development.
  • Rollout of new 'Bug Tracking' system.
    • This will ensure that system support staff can see what bugs are being worked on and the triage to clear them out.

Summary

Overall, the server didn't see much downtime this week. We are happy to see its performance and stability remain in great standing. Thanks for staying updated, and be sure to check back next week for more exciting changes!

· 2 min read
Nacholebraa

Welcome to this week's changelog! We're thrilled to share the latest updates and improvements, all aimed at making your experience smoother and more enjoyable. Check out the new features and enhancements we've rolled out for you!

Features

  • Storage Networks for storage systems!
  • Tyalus and Quix seeds can be planted.
    • 80% chance of harvesting 1-2 tyalus/quix seeds.
    • 50% chance of harvesting 1-2 tyalus/quix plants.
  • DemocracryBusiness now supports sales exporting.
    • Command: /business sales export <firm> <days>
note

There is no cap on days, however note that the plugin may struggle to go beyond 50-100 days!

  • Server Music Bots
    • New (experimental) song sources: mixcloud, reddit, tiktok, and tts!
    • Changes Instant song playback & Faster and more responsive
  • DemocracryBusiness format update
    • /csn history is no longer supported for businesses.
    • No longer all green. Previously viewed sales are now gray.

Government

  • Training node for the Dept. Homeland Security is read-only
  • Captains and Lieutenants are now able to /unfine for court orders, from the Dept. Homeland Security balance.
  • Redmont Bar Association given access to #budget for budget reporting
  • Event Warps are managed by the Department of Public Affairs.

Staff

  • Automatic tile entity limits are back online
    • Aimed to help prevent overcrowding entities and thus reduce Staff intervention.
    • This is a BETA change. Staff will continue to monitor and adjust accordingly.
  • Duplicated Transaction Logging has been restored.
  • Book o' Brews has been migrated to a new book.
note

The Old Book o' Brews will not work.

  • AreaShop has finished migrating to a new command structure
    • Whenever you are specifying a specific region name, do --region <name>. i.e. /as info region --region c001

Summary

This week brings exciting new features and updates! From enhanced storage networks and new plantable seeds to improvements in DemocracyBusiness and new server music bot sources, there's plenty to explore. Government and staff updates aim to improve efficiency and ensure smooth operations. Stay tuned for more updates next week, and happy exploring!

· 14 min read
Technofied

Welcome to the first blog write-up on the Player Feedback Survey! We've ran the Player Feedback Survey every month since June 2020, but this is the first time we're leveraging our new wiki to give you the full rundown on our findings, approval ratings, and thoughts. This is also the first time I'm writing long-form content for the server (excluding guides), so bare with me as I get my footing on the server's now official blog!

Ratings

Given these ratings were optional by nature, some of our playerbase chose not to provide a rating for some members - or complete them at all. Each Staff member got a message in their Discord Staff channel containing a breakdown of their numerical ratings (displayable as a bar graph).

Below are ratings broken down by department of the Staff team. :)

How are ratings classified and calculated?

For the purposes of this post, we've grouped numerical ratings into five categories, Very Poor (1), Poor (2), Fair (3), Good (4), and Excellent (5).

The Percentage of Responses found below in each table is calculated by summing up all scores belonging to each respective category, then dividing it by the number of responses received for each respective category.

Senior Administration

These include the Owners, Manager, and Senior Administrators. We received 571 individual ratings for this category, which means ~82 responses per member.

Percentage of Responses (%)
Excellent49.56
Good27.50
Fair15.76
Fair3.85
Poor3.33

General Feedback Raised

  • Players tended to provide a mix of hollistic and personal experience based responses.
    • This makes sense, given this category is often referred to as server leadership as well, and contains our most senior positions.
  • Feedback based on personal experience with senior administration were very positive, as players were pleased with community engagement from members of senior administration.
  • Hollistic feedback however was more mixed.
    • A lot of comments prefaced saying they like individuals in senior administration, but have concerns over how they conduct themselves in terms of the wider community.
    • This often centres around participation in Government, and general behaviour with players.
    • Most players recognised certain issues were inevitable (especially surrounding Government), and were unsure how to amend them. i.e. perceptions when involved in server politics.
  • A high number of respondants report that activity has improved or is high among this category.

Administration

This includes our Administrators. We received 392 individual ratings for this category, which means ~78 responses per member.

Percentage of Responses (%)
Excellent40.56
Good31.38
Fair21.94
Fair3.06
Poor3.06

General Feedback Raised

  • There were several members of administration that were praised by name, a lot of love for the team overall.
    • This is interesting given some members were mentioned to be inactive, but still overall highly rated due to their past and ongoing contributions to the server.
    • Players seem to recognise that the role of Administrators are long-term one, and more behind the scenes than our moderation team.
  • No administration-wide feedback unfortunately, most feedback given to this category hinges based on personal interaction.

Moderation

This includes our Moderators, and Trial Moderators. We received 641 individual ratings for this category, which means ~80 responses per member.

Percentage of Responses (%)
Excellent35.57
Good26.99
Fair26.05
Fair7.02
Poor4.37

General Feedback Raised

  • A lot of feedback was given about specific members, with any overarching feedback based on how Staff deal with punishments and behaviour.
  • Most feedback is concerned with activity, a lot of members that got poorly rated were inactive Staff members.
    • Positive feedback on the other hand was focused on Staff availability and specific commendation of staff members.
  • Inconsistency with punishments and unhospitable Staff are the most reoccuring complaints.

Punishments

This one was only covered in one question, that being "How do you feel the staff team handles punishments", however I believe it deserves its own section in the blog due to how important of a task player moderation is.

Breaking down the responses first

  • 47.87% of responses were eight and ten inclusive. (Excellent)
  • 39.36% of responses were between five and seven inclusive. (Fair)
  • 12.77% of responses were between one and three inclusive (Poor)

While ~86% of responses were Fair and above, internally we're hoping to raise Excellent responses to around ~65%, as it forms a large part of day-to-day Staffing, and robust punishment processes helps ensure everyone feels like they are being treated fairly and a part of a safe community.

Most complaints surrounding punishments are to do with equal application, or poor escalation, but interestingly most written responses (not ratings) that describe punishments are usually either positive or negative, not somewhere in the middle. This suggests to us that the feedback we've received is based on player experiences moreso than hollistic concerns - which can be attributed back to speciific Staff members and practises.

Internally, Staff members decision making looks a bit like this:

  • Major decisions are made through finding a consensus within administrations. This is usually reserved for members who are well integrated into the community, repeat offenders, or otherwise present a challenge in issuing a fair punishment.
  • Intermediary decisions are made by two or more Staff members, usually by raising the intent to punish a player in Staff channel and someone senior (either by tenure or rank) weighing in. More often than not, this is when players break rules but the degree of violation is unclear and context is highly-relevant.
  • Day-to-day decisions are usually made by the individual Staff member, training Staff members tend to double check with their mentor or another Staff member, however trend to issuing their own punishments as they progress through their trial period. These can be dealing with trolls, obvious rule-breaking, etc.

These processes are informal, however they have defined all punishments issued within the last month. This is important to consider because it means a lot of the disciplinary decision making process is consultative of peers. While this serves as a form of internal control, server leadership recognises it can be subjective depending on who is available for advice, and what is recommended may vary from one individual to another.

Recently, the server has focused on documenting more Staffing Policy, and refreshed our Rules to be simpler to read and interpret. In addition to this, we may need to explore documenting in Staff policy examples of punishments for each type of rule category to provide a consistent point of reference for the day-to-day punishments that make up a bulk of our punishments.

  • We used to have something similar in our earlier days, however Staff would often become hesitant to punish outside such rigid guidelines. So consideration needs to be made to make sure the guidelines are exactly what they are called, guidelines, and not be-it-end-all stipulations.

A positive change however, has been the introduction of an internal /punish command that launched alongside the new Rules page. It contains structured punishment reasons to ensure disciplinary action links back to a category in our Rules page that you can read clearly.

All in all, these results are decent for Punishments - however we set a high standard for punishment expectations and intend to be even better by the next feedback survey!

Available Staff

Players report on average 2-3 staff members being online during the hours they play on the server. This is decent given our size, however what is most commonly reported is that there are no staff members present for players playing in Asian timezones.

This is a tricky issue, given most of our playerbase is American, with Europeans as a close second. Indians are also rapidly growing category of players, which I believe is why more players on our feedback survey have reported seeing no Staff online. While our demographics remain largly the same, we recognise we need to compensate for these shifts.

A handful of new Staff members haev been headhunted to replace existing inactive Staff members, and provide more around-the-clock coverage. Unfortunately none have come from our Asian playerbase, however fortunately a lot of them cover unique hours (probably due to terrible sleep schedules..!) which should help substantially.

As always, we are on the lookout for more Staff. It helps us greatly if you recommend peers you think are a good fit to apply!

Server

79.78% of respondants rated us 8 or above! This is undoubtably a great score, however there is still room for improvement as always. Our overall server rating has remained the same for the past year or so.

How can we improve?

  • A lot of players aren't sure.
    • 25% of players say it can't be improved (meaning they gave us a perfect score!)
  • Reducing server-side lag (a very popular ask).
  • Reimplement the Friends plugin (a very popular ask).
  • Fairer punishments
    • Thoughts on what to do were discussed earlier.
  • Adding back in-game Seasons.
    • Not sure how to do this one currently, conceptually the community was supportive of the feature - however it was divisive ultimately for how it changed textures.
  • More economic diversity.
    • This comes mainly in the form of players requesting more niches, and more job titles.
  • More roleplay opportunities.
  • New onboarding process for players, and more inclusion within the community in general.
  • More 'scenario based' events (i.e. purge).
    • This was a very interesting and original suggestion to read.
    • We'll be thinking of some ways to incorperate more of these events, given they are widely popular among players...
  • Better communication of server changes.
    • We've recognised the #changelog channel on Discord isn't enough unfortunately.
    • We are exploring making monthly blog posts to summarise major changes, as well as fixes and improvements.

Server Features

We asked players to rate ten features of our server on a scale of one to five. Based on an aggregate score (total points earned per category), here are the results:

  1. Discord Organisation (407 points)
    • This one scored the highest, it wasn't even a close contest.
    • Only thing I can think of to improve (given no improvements were suggested) is to make verifying more clear, and deportation reflect on our Discord server more clearly.
  2. Economy and Business Roleplay (389 points)
    • The introduction of DemocracyBusinesses, DemocracyTrade, and DemocracyTreasury updates has greatly immersed the server economy.
    • A lot of custom features have created new jobs recently (i.e. Carpenter) which I imagine has helped a lot.
    • Diversity and complexity is still however lacking, and being looked into.
  3. Political Roleplay (376 points)
    • Despite a high rating, a lot of players report they aren't happy with the conduct of certain players. This is interesting because a lot of players recognise it's not a deal breaker or don't consider it an objective marker for dissatisfaction.
    • I believe we're lacking some engagement, especially with voting turnouts.
      • More will be done by the server to promote voting during election seasons and proactive voter registration in-game.
  4. Communication from Staff (369 points)
    • A lot of communication lies in how we communicate disciplinary action. We're working on getting a web interface for our punishments again, and may look into more elaborate or "secondary" reasons to attach to our heavier punishments as this keeps getting raised.
      • We're unsure at this stage what this would look like.
  5. Legal Roleplay and Forums Organisation (Tied at 369 points)
    • The legal side of the server isn't an easy pathway to begin with, more research needs to be done in terms of reducing the barriers of entry from a server-side perspective.
    • Forums structure wise is passable, however it remains difficult to navigate. Some decisions will need to be made on how to address this - we welcome suggestions especially on how.
  6. City Life RP (338 points)
    • Players are quick to point out the server simply does not engage in traditional role playing.
    • Server administration has taken the increase in interest in roleplay as a sign we need to start implementing opt-in (highly encouraged) roleplay. More details will follow as we start implementing new features to deal with this.
  7. Server Performance (305 points)
    • Server ticks-per-second (TPS) has not been scaling well with players.
    • This wasn't largly dealt with until I got back from my hiatus. Since then, several major causes have been eliminated.
    • Two plugins are still causing issues due to their structural choices. We're working with the developer of them to get it fixed, it's quite a complicated issue to do with databases.
  8. Criminal Roleplay (296 points)
    • Players frequently complain there isn't much depth to criminal roleplay, with the current policing state being overbearing.
    • DemocracyCrime is a plugin we've commissioned to replace policing, it signals a shift into more roleplay-focused gameplay and more opportunities for criminals to predominantly engage in crime.
  9. Relationship Roleplay (274 points)
    • Admittedly this is none existent. End has been thinking about expanding our marriage plugin to include more roles (families!), however it has been a low priority given our limited resources. The above all take priority before this, for now.
  10. We had a tie, so no 10th. :p
About Custom Furniture

66% of you reported that you found the Custom Furniture update to be excellent (8 or above). This was a bit underwhelming for me as the person primarily response for implementing the feature. I imagine this will improve with adoption of more furniture in-game, as well as improvements to furniture. :)

Concluding Thoughts

I'd first like to thank crytiee for running this survey, we had 94 respondants, which is a new record! Crytiee's persistant reminders and emphasis on our Supreme Crates raffle has went a long way to getting you lot to respond, and I couldn't be more grateful. As someone who reads all these responses come time for each survey, I have a few takeaways from this:

  • I believe we're finally aligning with the priorities of the common player.
    • A lot of the feedback from previous months surrounded concerns we didn't have our priorities straight. I saw no mention this time around, which is a positive sign.
  • There is a strong, renewed faith in senior administration.
    • I attribute that to each member of senior administration's hard work in taking feedback on board.
    • It's not the easiest to read some of these comments, (you lot can be brutal!), but you guys are also very fair.
    • I've strongly felt the changes I made based on prior feedback is recognised in this survey and has been rewarded appropriately, which is a great motivator for myself and my peers to improve!
  • With the exception of Staff Punishments, structurally players are feeling that the Staff team has improved recently. A lot of our new hires have also had very positive reception. Awesome!
  • The changes we've made in the past month to introduce new features have been well received.

All in all, I believe this survey has shown an appetite for change that we're looking to fill and a sense of renewed optimism in the server that we intend to keep going.

If you've made it this far, I'd like to thank you for reading this blog post. Hopefully you've found this informative, it was a lot to write and I'm hoping as we do more of these so will my writing skills!

Yours faithfully,

Tech

· 2 min read
Nacholebraa

Hello!

We have compiled a list of recent addons and changes we pushed during the month of January 2024! Check out the list below for a bit of insight with what the system team has been working on.